Far-right ‘proud homophobe’ Jair Bolsonaro elected president of Brazil
Image: Image: Marcelo Camargo/Agência Brasil, licensed under Creative Commons 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Social Liberal Party candidate Jair Bolsonaro, who has repeatedly made homophobic remarks both before and during his campaign, has been elected president of Brazil in a runoff vote.
Final polls show Bolsonaro leading Workers Party candidate Fernando Haddad 55 per cent to 45 per cent, PinkNews reported.
Bolsonaro stated in a 2011 interview that he would rather his son die than come out to him as gay.
“I would be incapable of loving a gay son. I prefer that he die in an accident,” he said.
He later reiterated that point of view in an interview with Stephen Fry, saying, “No father would ever take pride in having a gay son.”
Fry called Bolsonaro’s statements “genuinely terrifying”, saying his leadership could lead to “more broken heads on pavement, more blood spilled, more torture, more killing, more unhappiness, less acceptance, more crying parents.”
He has also said that if he saw two men kissing in the street he would punch them, and didn’t back down when asked about this in an interview with Time.
“I do not kiss my wife on the street. Why face society? Why take that into the school? Little children of 6 or 7, watching two men kiss as the government wanted them to do. Is this democracy?” he said.
“So let’s respect the pedophile’s right to have sex with a two-year-old? Would that unite [Brazil]?” he then said in the interview.
“If anyone interferes into the private life of two people, I will defend the right of those two people between their four walls. That is no problem,” he added.
2018 has been one of the deadliest years for Brazilian LGBTI people on record, with an advocacy group saying more than 300 people have been murdered so far this year.
Despite this, same-sex marriage has been legal there since 2013.
Bolsonaro has also claimed that “there is no homophobic behaviour in Brazil.”
“Those who die, 90 percent of homosexual deaths, they die in drug-related situations, prostitution, or even killed by their own partners,” he said.
Like many anti-LGBTI politicians in Australia, Bolsonaro has taken issue with sex education programs in schools mentioning that LGBTI people exist, frequently suggested that such programs were designed to turn children gay.
“I went into battle with the gays because the government proposed anti-homophobia classes for the junior grades, but that would actively stimulate homosexuality in children from six years old,” he said.
Bolsonaro has compared himself to US President Donald Trump, and spent part of his campaign live-streaming from a hospital bed after being stabbed in a failed assassination attempt.
